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Acknowledging fear is not
a cause for depression or discouragement. Because we possess such fear,
we also are potentially entitled to experience fearlessness. True fearlessness
is not the reduction
of fear; but going beyond fear.
In order to experience fearlessness,
it is necessary to experience fear. The essence of cowardice is not acknowledging the reality
of fear. Fear can take many forms. Logically, we know
we can't live forever. We know that we are going to die, so we are afraid.
We are petrified of our death.
On another level, we are afraid that we can't handle the demands of the world.
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© Francene Hart
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This fear expresses itself
as a feeling of inadequacy. We feel that our own lives are overwhelming,
and confronting the rest of the world is more overwhelming.
Then there is abrupt fear,
or panic, that arises when new situations occur suddenly in our lives.
When we feel that we can't handle them, we jump or twitch. Sometimes fear
manifests in the form of restlessness: doodles on a note pad, playing
with our fingers, or fidgeting in our chairs. We feel that we have to
keep ourselves moving all the time, like an engine running in a motor
car. The pistons go up and down, up and down. As long as the pistons
keep
moving, we feel safe. Otherwise, we are afraid we might die on the spot.
There are innumerable strategies
that we use to take our minds off of fear. Some people take tranquilizers.
Some people do yoga. Some people watch television, or read a magazine,
or go to a bar to have a beer. From the coward's point of view, boredom
should be avoided, because when we are bored we begin to feel anxious.
We are getting closer to our fear. Entertainment should be promoted and
any thought of death should be avoided. So cowardice is trying to live
our lives as though death were unknown.
There have been periods in
history in which many people searched for a potion of longevity. If there
were such a thing, most people would find it quite horrific. If they had
to live in this world for a thousand years without dying, long before
they got to their thousandth birthday, they would probably commit suicide.
Even if you could live forever, you would be unable to avoid the reality
of death and suffering around you.
Acknowledging Fear
Fear has to be acknowledged.
We have to realize our fear and reconcile ourselves with fear. We should
look at how we move, how we talk, how we conduct ourselves, how we chew
our nails, how we sometimes put our hands in our pockets uselessly. Then
we will find something out about how fear is expressed in the form of
restlessness.
We must face the fact that
fear is lurking in our lives, always, in everything we do.
On the other hand, acknowledging
fear is not a cause for depression or discouragement. Because we possess
such fear, we also are potentially entitled to experience fearlessness.
True fearlessness is not the reduction of fear, but going beyond fear.
Unfortunately, in the English language, we don't have one word that means
that. Fearlessness is the closest term, but by fearless we don't mean
"less fear", but "beyond fear".
Going beyond fear begins when
we examine our fear: our anxiety, nervousness, concern, and restlessness.
If we look into our fear, if we look beneath its veneer, the first thing
we find is sadness, beneath the nervousness. Nervousness is cranking up,
vibrating, all the time. When we slow down, when we relax with our fear,
we find sadness, which is calm and gentle. Sadness hits you in your heart,
and your body produces a tear. Before you cry, there is a feeling in your
chest and then, after that, you produce tears in your eyes. You are about
to produce rain or a waterfall in your eyes and you feel sad and lonely,
and perhaps romantic at the same time. That is the first tip of fearlessness,
and the first sign of real warriorship.
You might think that, when
you experience fearlessness, you will hear the opening to Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony or see a great explosion in the sky, but it doesn't happen
that way. In the Shambhala tradition, discovering fearlessness comes from
working with the softness of the human heart.
The birth of the warrior is
like the first growth of a reindeer's horns. At first, the horns are very
soft and almost rubbery, and they have little hairs growing on them. They
are not yet horns, as such: they are just sloppy growths with blood inside.
Then, as the reindeer ages, the horns grow stronger, developing four points
or ten points or even forty points.
Fearlessness, at the beginning,
is like those rubbery horns. They look like horns, but you can't quite
fight with them. When a reindeer first grows its horns, it doesn't know
what to use them for. It must feel very awkward to have those soft, lumpy
growths on your head. But then the reindeer begins to realize that it
should have horns: that horns are a natural part of being a reindeer.
In the same way, when a human
being first gives birth to the tender heart of warriorship he or she may
feel extremely awkward or uncertain about how to, relate to this kind
of fearlessness. But then, as you experience this sadness more and more,
you realize that human beings should be tender and open. So you no longer
need to feel shy or embarrassed about being gentle. In fact, your softness
begins to become passionate. You would like to extend yourself to others
and communicate with them. When tenderness evolves in that direction, then
you can truly appreciate the world around you. Sense perceptions become
very interesting things. You are so tender and open already that you cannot
help opening yourself to what takes place all around you. When you see
red or green or yellow or black, you respond to them from the bottom of
your heart. When you see someone else crying or laughing or being afraid,
you respond to them as well. At that point, your beginning level of fearlessness
is developing further into warriorship.
When you begin to feel comfortable
being a gentle and decent person, your reindeer horns no longer have little
hairs growing on them -- they are becoming real horns. Situations become
very real, quite real, and on the other hand, quite ordinary. Fear evolves
into fearlessness naturally, very simply, and quite straightforwardly.
The ideal of warriorship is
that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior
can be very brave as well. Without that heartfelt sadness, bravery is
brittle, like a china cup. If you drop it, it will break or chip. But
the bravery of the warrior is like a lacquer cup, which has a wooden base
covered with layers of lacquer. If the cup drops, it will bounce rather
than break. It is soft and hard at the same time.
This
article was excerpted from the book : Shambhala: The Sacred
Path
of the Warrior, by Chögyam Trungpa, © 1999 by Diana Judith Mukpo.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Shambhala Publications Inc.
About The Author
Chögyam
Trungpa, meditation
master, scholar, and artist, founded
the Naropa Institute in Boulder,
Colorado; Shambhala Training; and
Shambhala International, an association
of meditation centers. His
other books include Cutting Through Spiritual
Materialism, The Myth
of Freedom and the Way of Meditation, and Meditation
in Action. For
more information about the author and Shambhala
meditation centers, visit http://www.shambhala.org.
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